The Acquisition of Apparent Optionality: Word Order in Subject and Object Shift Constructions in Norwegian

Grammatical Gender in Norwegian: Language Acquisition and Language Change

“…And in the competition between masculine and feminine, frequency again becomes a factor, as the masculine is massively more frequent than the feminine in child-directed speech. The findings from the present study thus support previous claims in the literature that frequency does play a role in acquisition, but only in combination with other factors such as complexity or economy (Roeper 2007;Bentzen & Westergaard 2007;Anderssen, Bentzen, Rodina & Westergaard 2010;.…”

Frequency and economy in the acquisition of variable word order

“…The second case, investigated in Westergaard and Bentzen (2007), is one where two construction types are attested with equally low frequencies in the input (two types of embedded clauses), but non-target-consistent word order appears in only one of them in the children's production. The third case, discussed in Anderssen et al (2010), is similar to the first one in that two constructions are again attested with very different input frequencies (subject and object shift, see also Westergaard, 2008b;Holmberg, 1986;Vikner, 1994Vikner, , 2006. But in this case, non-target-consistent word order is attested in both.…”

Moving in small steps towards verb second: A case study

“…Moreover, whereas children hardly ever overuse subject and object movement, they regularly fail to apply movement to form subject and object shift constructions (Josefsson 1996;Anderssen et al 2010). In addition, children are sensitive to very fine distinctions in the input.…”